L.A. Blues III

by Maxine Thompson

  I hadn’t thought about how I would need someone when I went into the delivery room. Then something occurred to me. It didn’t matter if the baby wasn’t Romero’s because Reverend Edgar didn’t know what he looked like. I didn’t think the minister knew that Romero was a Latino either, because I refused to discuss this with him. And now it didn’t matter about the baby’s paternity because I knew he or she was mine.

  I took a few seconds and thought about it. “Yes, that would be nice. I would be honored to have you go through the delivery with me. That sure would bless my baby.” I started laughing. “What better way to enter the world than have a minister present? This baby is going to need it with me as a mother.”

  Reverend Edgar chuckled, and I could see his mood lift.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  I really liked living up on that mountain with its outcropping of rocks, which went up higher behind the cabin. Sometimes I felt like I could go outside and touch the sky, which sometimes shifted from rainforest green to wisteria blue to azure. Sometimes the clouds hung so low, I felt like I was standing in heaven there was such a spiritual vibration here.

  A month and a half had gone by and I’d gotten used to living in solitude in the wilderness. Firs, evergreens, and cedars surrounded the cabin. Chrysanthemums, larkspur, morning glories, and late-blooming snapdragons clustered around the yard.

  I’d even learned to see in the dark at night. I felt like a panther the way I could see all around without lights on at night.

  Often I couldn’t get a signal on my cell, but I loved not having distractions. No laptop. No TV. No Facebook, although I could’ve gotten them on my cell phone or used the computer when I went into town with Reverend Edgar. But I loved this sacred space I was in. It was like a holding pattern in this last trimester.

  I chose only to contact the reverend by phone. He said that no one had come looking for me, so I have to assume the Feds thought I just skipped town. I hope they know I had nothing to do with the two officers who were murdered at the safe house. I thought about reaching out to Detective Hamilton to let him know what had happened, but I was too afraid it would endanger his life. Because Romero had always trusted him with his life, I really believed he was clean. Yet, I still couldn’t take any chances.

  I text messaged Chica so she could tell Shirley and Venita I was safe. For the moment, I wasn’t worried about the hit man, or about the blackmailer. I felt free. I felt safe. Life was good.

  I went over the series of events. The car accident, the shooting at the cemetery, the shooting at Universal Studios, the shooting at the safe house. Death was all around me, yet I never felt more alive.

  Well, DEA Special Agent Braggs had probably been killed from his own blackmailer so that was definitely a case of “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.” I hadn’t had to lift a finger. As far as I knew, FBI Special Agent Stamper was still locked up I knew, but I didn’t know who he had paid off, or if they would still try to come after me. I didn’t know about the Executioner. Was he still looking for me? I couldn’t worry about it.

  Instead, I focused on my unborn child. I talked to the baby all the time. This new life was becoming more and more real to me. I felt bonded to the baby. The baby would respond to my voice by kicking. The baby was growing and I was beginning to really stick out. I loved rubbing olive oil on my growing stomach and so far, I didn’t have any stretch marks.

  The last time Reverend Edgar came to bring food, he remarked, “You’re finally growing. I was worried that your baby was going to be too small.”

  I smiled. “No, it’s your good cooking and this mountain air. I stay ravenous. Food has never tasted so good.”

  I spent most of my time, sitting in the rocking chair, crocheting baby blankets, the craft I’d picked up when I was on bed rest.

  On one of the reverend’s visits, Reverend Edgar took me to a local doctor, who checked me and said I had a couple more months to go and everything was fine, so I was content. Reverend Edgar even found a secondhand computer at the church; however, I couldn’t get the Internet with it. If I wanted to look up anything online, I used my iPhone. It was nice to have something to write on, though. Reverend even bought a journal for me to write in. I recorded my thoughts about the pregnancy, and less and less, I worried about the outside world.

  Actually, I was under less stress than when I was in Los Angeles. Birds hung around the cabin and sang at the top of their lungs. I woke up to the sound of blue jays and mockingbirds. Although this was a desolate area, the oak trees had turned a deep sable brown and the leaves were a kaleidoscope burst of gold, umber, burgundy, ochre, and fiery orange and scarlet red. Rhododendron shrubs were in late bloom. I opened my journal and began to write:

  I am so happy to wake up here in Big Bear. I’m feeling so uplifted. A deer came to the glass window this morning, wiggled its nose, and it let me know how close I am to nature and to God.

  I have always worked and never stopped to take time to see what I was feeling.

  This little hiatus in my life has been good.

  I dreamed about Romero last night for the first time. He looked really happy. He told me, “I’m fine. You and the baby will be fine.”

  It seems like the baby even seems at peace here. He moves during the day and not at night. I’m beginning to think it’s going to be a boy. I’m glad I don’t know the sex of the baby yet. I’d like to be surprised.

  The next morning I woke up to a snow blizzard. I looked out the window and gave out a yell. “I love it!”

  Having been raised in Los Angeles, I’d never seen snow up close. I only saw snow on the mountains at a distance. I wasn’t a skier so I never had come to Big Bear Mountain.

  At first I was excited about the snow. The house felt a little chillier, but I didn’t care. I didn’t worry about it. I had plenty of water and food. But then I had a weird feel. There was only one way in and one way out just about up here. Reverend Edgar had already been up to visit yesterday and I wondered, could he make it through that snow? I tried to put out a call and couldn’t. I couldn’t get a signal.

  I made a cup of warm cocoa and was reading my Bible, when I felt a gush of water rush down my legs. I wondered, what was that? I thought I had urinated on myself. I went to the bathroom and saw what the pregnancy books called “the bloody show.”

  Oh, no! It was too soon. I wasn’t quite thirty-two weeks. I had two more months to go.

  I didn’t feel any pain, so I didn’t know what to do. I tried to call Reverend Edgar again. No signal.

  Before I knew it, I doubled over in pain, holding my stomach. “Oh, no, it’s not time,” I cried out. “God, please help me.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  I decided to lie down and pray the pain would go away. Maybe it was what I read about online, Braxton Hicks—false labor. But the pain wouldn’t stop. It was as relentless as a hurricane. I started trying to breathe through my mouth like I’d read in the books and seen on the Lamaze videos online. I tried to remember what Reverend Edgar and I had gone over.

  Sweat trickled down my forehead and I was huffing and puffing, but I was able to plan in between contractions. I pulled out some scissors to cut the cord. I found thread to tie off the cord. I collected the few baby undershirts, gowns, and cloth diapers I’d been able to buy when I’d gone to the local doctor.

  I collected clean sheets and warm blankets. I thought about boiling water, since they always did that in the movies, but I decided to use rubbing alcohol to sterilize the scissors.

  “Well, it looks like it’s me and you, baby boy or baby girl.”

  I still didn’t know the sex of the baby. I’d seen some Lamaze and childbirth films, and once I was with my old partner, Okamoto, when he delivered a baby in our scout car, but the women generally had a coach and someone helping deliver the baby. Wasn’t it dangerous having a baby without a doctor or a doula? Would I die? Oh, no, if I died, my baby couldn’t make it. I had to make it. I was determined. I tried not to cry out, but as th
e minutes crept by, my low moans turned to loud groans to loud moans, to animal-like screams. The deep breathing was not helping at all. Is this what women go through having babies? I thought through my blaze of pain.

  I had never been in so much pain in my life. How could women even live through this type of torture? I almost wished I could die just to stop the pain. I didn’t know if I was hallucinating, things felt so crazy. I wondered if this was not a nightmare I couldn’t wake up from. Through a foggy mist of blood red pain, I vaguely remember my bowels letting loose and my peeing on myself, but I didn’t bother to go to the bathroom. I was afraid I’d deliver the baby into the toilet. When I was on the police force, I’d seen that happen so I didn’t want to take chances.

  I don’t know how many hours went by, but I could tell it was getting dark outside. I had no framework to go by, other than the stages of labor I had learned on YouTube. I cried, I prayed, I hollered during the pains. It didn’t feel like no easy stage like they described on the video. How come I couldn’t be like the woman who had relatively painless labors, or was that some type of myth? Some of the pains felt like gas pains, some felt like an elephant stomping up and down my spine. I never knew there were so many levels to pain. Pain took on its own music. It was like some dark grotesque threnody which was ancient as the first woman in time, accompanied by my screams. It felt like a demon taunting me.

  Finally, after an interminable length of time, I let out one long scream. “Help me, God!” I had one long, excruciating pain and I felt like something split me in half. Then there was another burning sensation, a gurgling plop sound, and then a baby’s cry followed. I fell back on the bed, panting. I didn’t realize how much I was sweating until I sat up and saw I was soaking wet. I looked down, and there was my baby laying between my legs. It was a girl! And although she looked small, she seemed strong, judging by her lungs. She was as red as a lobster, and not much bigger, but she was beautiful to me. I reached down and lifted her. I held her close to my breast and let her nurse. Meantime, she was still connected to her umbilical cord. Involuntarily, I felt another push, and the placenta came out.

  My bed looked like a massacre had taken place in it, so I moved over from the bloody/feces/ urine/amniotic fluid area. I decided to lie still for the moment and get my wits about myself. I cut the baby’s umbilical cord and clamped it with thread. Instinctively, I pushed my stomach. There was a gush of blood . . . but it slowed down. Thank God I wasn’t hemorrhaging. I put a towel between my legs to monitor the bleeding. I swaddled the baby in the clean blanket, I changed my sheets, and I pulled out an old-fashioned quilt, and covered us both.

  I must have dozed off, but when I woke up, the baby was sleeping peacefully in my arms and latching on to my breast. She rooted strongly, so I was glad she was a good feeder. She looked to weigh about four to five pounds. I unwrapped her blanket and examined my baby. I counted all five fingers and five toes and let out a sigh of relief. I held her up in the light and studied her as if she was a strange, yet familiar person. It was as if I’d known her all my life. Her little round face was framed by a thick crown of straight hair.

  “Where have you been all my life?” I sang in my usual off-key voice.

  For the first time I took a good look at her face. As tiny as her features were, she looked like Romero! She even resembled his daughter, Bianca. In fact, she looked like the baby picture of Bianca that Romero had once showed me. Her eyes were light hazel when she opened them. “Thank you, Lord!” I said. “You look like your big sister, little one.” So I did get pregnant on my last night with Romero.

  I decided to sit in the rocking chair and rock my daughter for the first time. In the gentle movements, my thoughts raced. For the past twenty-four hour, I had been in an animal-like space. Grunting, bearing down, and having a baby. My body had had a primitive mind of its own. Now, my worries were returning. I was wondering how soon it would be before the reverend came to see me so we could get to a hospital.

  I calculated how I would survive. I had enough food for a week, and plenty of water, which reminded me that I was thirsty now. I walked over to the refrigerator and drank a gallon of water. I also fixed a sandwich. I did know with breastfeeding I had to eat. I took my prenatal vitamins. I could make it, I assured myself. The baby had my milk, and I had food. The cabin was warm. The snow had slowed up and I would be all right. I was not bleeding heavily. Each time the baby nursed, I felt my uterus contract, my stomach go down, and the bleeding lessen.

  The baby cried only when she was hungry, but overall, she was a good baby. She would nurse, then fall back to sleep. The blizzard had slowed up, but the snow was still falling.

  “Angel,” I said as I cooed to her in my arms. She grabbed my finger and held onto it. I felt my heart break I was so full with love. “You’re a little angel.” I’d never fallen so instantly and deeply in love. Then it hit me. I would name her “Angel Romera Soldano-Gonzalez.”

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  I didn’t know how long I slept but it was dark outside when I woke up. Shadows shifted up under the door, and I could see the stars through the skylights. The sky was an indigo and periwinkle–looking color tonight. A crescent moon only sent a sliver of light. A haunting wind howled and whistled through the cabin. I was feeling spooked.

  I heard someone coming into the cabin. “Is that you, Reverend Edgar?” I called out.

  I didn’t hear anyone reply. I looked up at a tall, big-boned Black man.

  “What do you want?” I asked. My Glock was in my purse, which was near me. Lord, I will kill anyone who tries to mess with my baby.

  “Miss, I don’t want anything. I just need to stay for a minute and catch my breath.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Don’t worry. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  All of a sudden Angel let out a wail.

  “Oh, you have a baby?” He lifted his eyebrow in surprise.

  I gave him the look that I believed a tigress would send out to any threat to one of her cubs. I pulled my baby close to my chest. I reached for my Glock, which I kept under the pillow next to the wall. I think my intruder saw the fierce look in my eyes because I watched him ease toward the door.

  “Don’t worry. I’m getting ready to leave. Do you have a car?”

  “No.”

  With that the stranger left as quickly as he came.

  I got up and locked the door and put sticks in the windows. What was that all about? I wondered.

  I thought about how easily this man had slipped into the cabin and it occurred to me that it wouldn’t be anything for the hit man to find me up here. I started mapping out my plan. I had to get off this mountain and out of here.

  I tried to get a signal on my phone and couldn’t. I slept lightly that night. I woke up and fed the baby as needed. I went back to sleep. I think I was dreaming because I heard my deceased father’s voice: “Wake up, Z. You’ve got to be alert. You’re the queen now and you’ve got to protect your castle. You have a baby to protect now.”

  I instantly woke up. I thought of chess, and how the queen was often used to checkmate the king.

  I wrapped up my baby, kissed her, and made her a soft bed of towels, then placed her in a safe corner of the room. I moved the room divider in front of her.

  I pulled out my Bible and opened it. I began to pray Psalms 23. “‘Yea though I walk through the valley of death, I will fear no evil.’” I rubbed my ankh for extra protection. I knew I was going to need both my Christian and my African mojo to help me.

  Suddenly, I heard a slight jiggling of the door. Even with the lock on the door, it slipped open easily. I thought about how easy it was for burglars to get into any house they really wanted to, because that was what they were trained to do—pick locks. It was two in the morning. For some reason, I stayed calm inside. I could hear soft footsteps tiptoeing across the hardwood floor. I knew in my spirit it was “the Executioner.”

  I had the lights out, but I could quite clearly see the silh
ouette of a rather tall man with leather gloves and a mask on. He had a 9 mm with a silencer at the end. He was said to be an expert marksman.

  “I’ve been waiting for you,” I said softly when he stepped into my room.

  I took the first stone and threw it. I missed him. I really don’t know what I was thinking; I was hoping to knock him down like David in the Bible. The falling of the stone did alert me to where he was standing because I could hear a “Whoosh” sound from where he was standing.

  My would-be assassin aimed to shoot me, but he hesitated when he saw the baby blanket in my arms.

  I had wrapped up a towel inside the blanket, put it in my arms, and acted like I had the baby in the bed with me. Seeing what he thought was a baby made the Executioner hesitate—unfortunately, a second too long. Study long, study wrong. I got the drop on him.

  I used the wrapped towels with my Glock covered up in it to shoot “the Executioner.” The towels were burnt through from the gunfire. I hit him straight between the eyes. Bull’s-eye.

  Once again, it was down to me or him. I hated to kill again, but this time around, I had a child to take care of. I planned to be here to raise my child.

  “Miss, did you know the person who was trying to kill you?” The police looked over his pencil as he took the report.

  I glanced around the cabin’s living room and saw the yellow cordoned-off strip for the crime scene, and the body bag. The room was swarming with deputies and police officers.

  “No.” I held my face straight. I didn’t know who I could trust. I didn’t know who was behind killing the guards at the safe house. I didn’t know who the mole was, so I had to be careful. Someone had to have leaked that information as to my whereabouts. I glanced over at the Bible sitting in the rocking chair where I last left it after I called the police when I was able to get a signal. I thought about how Lazarus had been resurrected from the grave.